I think we can all agree that Asian horror is elite. I remember my first experience with Ringu changed my life forever (and temporarily ruined my sleep schedule). This time it’s a Japanese horror game “Yuni” set in the 1990s.
The title menu and opening level alone gave me flashbacks to Shadow Corridor (another Asian horror video game reviewed here on PN). From the deafeningly silent hallways to the deafening cries of cicadas, the spookiness really puts you on the edge of your seat. Confront ghosts and apparitions.
You play Ai, a lonely Japanese schoolgirl who finds herself in a very unfortunate game with Tsun, the spirit of a deceased boy. The game is simple: you have to find a bucket of water and a doll. The doll is hidden somewhere and you have to find it and submerge it in a bucket of water. However, no one or anything can see you doing this. If you lose, you’ll be playing around forever.
It sounds simple, but it has several layers of complexity. First, the place you’re in, whether it’s an abandoned school or a hospital, is jam-packed with corners, doors, and rooms leading to nowhere. Essentially, you are in a kind of maze. Once you’ve found the puppet, you’ll have to return to where you came from, so your sense of direction is very helpful. is. Instead of putting the doll back in the bucket of water, I got lost trying to find it!
The sometimes baffling layout is only half the battle with Yuoni. Alongside the endless twilight, there are ghosts that haunt the level. These ghosts range from glitchy shadows to large, stubby elongated objects, all with different behavior. Some have excellent hearing, so they need to hold their breath to crawl, while others have incredible eyesight, so they can tactically hide and pass by, or other You have to find a way. This means you have to be on your toes (sometimes literally!) and adapt your playstyle based on the ghosts you encounter. You can hide or run away, but some people jump right out and start over.
Yuoni has all the pieces to create a great horror puzzle, but when you put it all into action, things don’t go as smoothly as you’d like. Repeated visuals get dull quickly and a handful of repeating ghosts becomes very predictable once you avoid them. While complicating, it only delayed the inevitable of submerging the doll’s head in water.
However, there are three levels of difficulty: Normal, Hard, and Nintendo Switch-exclusive Deathless. The latter mode is basically a walking simulator. If you stomp on the ghost’s face or spin the ring, the ghost won’t come to you at all. However, keep in mind that there are still jump scares scattered here and there, and many of them are very effective.
My biggest problem with Yuoni is the visuals. I found myself having to tweak brightness and contrast many times. Even at dusk, in some places it was very difficult to tell if it was a wall or a dark corridor. Even after finding the optimal settings, everything was very muddy and unclear. This adds a bit more spookiness, but it also has a big impact on gameplay. It was when I was pushed against them that I found out what they were! And that’s mostly because the on-screen prompt seemed to open it!
